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Hallie Siegel writes: "The European Commission and 180 companies and research organizations (under the umbrella of euRobotics) have launched the world's largest civilian research and innovation program in robotics. Covering manufacturing, agriculture, health, transport, civil security and households, the initiative – called SPARC – is the E.U.'s industrial policy effort to strengthen Europe's position in the global robotics market (€60 billion a year by 2020). This initiative is expected to create over 240,000 jobs in Europe, and increase Europe's share of the global market to 42% (a boost of €4 billion per year). The European Commission will invest €700 million and euRobotics will invest €2.1 billion."

Covering manufacturing, agriculture, health, transport, civil security and households, the initiative -- called SPARC -- is the E.U.'s industrial policy effort to strengthen Europe's position in the global robotics market (â60 billion a year by 2020)

Since this is the program initiative, and has nothing to do with the trademark Oracle owns on a CPU architecture... they would get told to go screw themselves pretty quickly.

A trademark is only meaningful in the specific field you have it in. And the SPARC CPU has nothing specifically to do with robotics. And, it has nothing to do with multi-government initiatives to promote and develop technologies and their adoption.

In this case, SPARC is the name of the program to promote the use of robotics.

The guys that vacuumed up all the money in the US economy through (continuing) extraction in the name of "free markets" and other cockeyed holy market nonsense, own industries other than anything that might grow and/or create jobs. So they spent all that money legally bribing elected officials to pass laws lackies for the wealthy owners of all the capital wrote, to advantage themselves over everyone else. When they still can't out compete anyone else to turn a profit, because they have a declining asset (or

Everyone speaks about a possible losss of jobs or trademark issues. Am I the only one thinking that robot technology is cool? This is the kind of shit that could allow exploration of the oceans and eventually space, prosthetic help for sick people, cheaper and more efficient mass production etc. Plus, it would probably generate some interesting by-products, like advanced algorithms, maybe a new programming language or new processor types. And it gives jobs to young people with PhDs.

PS Jobs are being lost and created all the time. Think robot maintainer, robot programmer, robot police (?) (the "Turing"?), robot designer. And, anyway, if a job can be taken by a robot it probably isn't very interesting or creative to begin with. If I had a choice, I'd rather be doing the creative stuff.

How many of these "robot maintainers" are white/Asian, and how many are African-American/Latino?

Yeah, that's what I thought, you right-wing racist prick. All you want to do is put people who don't look like you out of a job. Fuck you.

Hm, I do agree that some people may lose their jobs, but I don't see how you inferred that they would be African-American or Latinos. I did not mention race in my post and, in my value system which is not particularly right-wing, all lost jobs are equal independent of the race of people who lost them. It just so happens that the loss of some jobs in a certain sector may be the result of great progress in other aspects of life. So, I believe the overall balance is or could be positive. At least if you are op

It's "I for one welcome our commissioner-overlords and their total detachment from reality":) I have lived in the pre-1989 Eastern Bloc and I can spot a centralistic, ineffectual project intended to just shuffle money from the taxpayers to the Brussels bureaucracy and its friends in the industry.

If we add all the job creations and GDP increases that various EU projects claimed to induce, today we would have 400 million jobs filled and a 50% GDP growth per year. But the reality is that EU is in recession and unemployment is high.

yes, first it will take 240,000 European people to design and build the robots.
Then the 749,000 US agriculture workers (2012 BOL numbers) in the US lose their jobs.
Then then migrant worker flow (aka Illegal aliens) decrease to near zero.
Bad or good? hmmm....

Automation improves productivity. By your logic, ancient agrarian economies should be strived for because everyone had a chance to work his ass off. I mean, what does it matter how little wealth was actually produced with that, right?

And what of the millions of auto workers and those in peripheral industries who gained their jobs due to automation. I mean.... do you realize an AUTOmobile is a form of automation in itself? We automated the horse. Sure, all the horsewhip and buggy manufacturers lost their jobs, but in their place sprouted an even larger industry. I mean, there is a gas station and auto repair shop on almost every corner in my town. When robots become as ubiquitous, there will be many industries surrounding their support.

My brother works as one of these "robot repair men". Him and 4 others travel between several building maintaining about 200-250 various types of robots. So what use to be ~200+ people working was chopped down to ~5 people.

These robots being maintained were most likely built on an assembly line by other robots which are most likely maintained by a hand full of people.

Awesome! Now here's a wacky idea: what if we used the liberated work force to finally fix some of the externalities of our industrial societies, or pour them into the renewable energy industry and other similar industries (material reprocessing etc.), which are perhaps more labour-intensive than just a few large turbines and mines but at least we know we can keep them running longer? I mean, only in a world full of dumb people can producing wealth X with Y people be "better" than producing wealth X with Y'Y

K. S. Kyosuke's reply mirrors some of what I have to reply to your post, so I incorporate what he posted here, but would also like to add the following:

The most deployed robots today are industrial arms like Kukas, and I suspect that's what your brother repairs. The reason for this is because they are very simple as far as robots go. The future I'm talking about will have several orders of magnitude more robots than there are today, they will be as ubiquitous as cars, and will be so complex that they mak

And they'll be designed to make it easy to repair them. Hot swappable modules for each major component. Easily automatized repair. Most broken modules won't be repaired.The goal will be minimal downtime (we had contracts for under 4 hours unscheduled downtime per year). So that means the entire unit, or an entire module is swapped out and the unit is functional again.

Specialists cost money and are likely to only be used in the initial design, creation, and debugging of the robots (i.e. all the creative

And they'll be designed to make it easy to repair them. Hot swappable modules for each major component. Easily automatized repair. Most broken modules won't be repaired. The goal will be minimal downtime (we had contracts for under 4 hours unscheduled downtime per year). So that means the entire unit, or an entire module is swapped out and the unit is functional again.

You're arguing about the future while thinking about the complexity and capability of robots today, and again (as I argued in another post to you) considering only robots that replace factory labor... which robots of the future will do of course but go well beyond. You think it's as easy as just swapping out components? Maybe my future robot butler keeps knocking over my lamp with its arm. So I swap out the arm and it keeps doing it. I swap out the eye and it keeps doing it. I swap out the brain and it keep

I think the amount of debuggers employed will be over three orders of magnitude lower than the amount of workers replaced by the robots. And even then, it won't be cost effective to send most problems to them.

I think you are underestimating the "don't bother to repair" tendency. Quite simply- it's just cheaper to replace than repair most devices these days. There isn't as much value in repairing a $22,000 "Baxter" or a $30,000 Kiva as there is i

Once "a large portion but minority portion of humans are not requred" is the sticking point.

If 20% of your population that wants and needs to work can't find work, you are facing civil unrest and violence.

The current attitude in the united states is that only "lazy" people can't find work. It's "their fault they can't find work". If 60% of the population thinks and votes that way ("It's OUR money- don't TAX us- we want it ALL for ourselves") the

Sure. But if every one you imprison intimidates ten others, and so there aren't enough to protest & get the dole raised to (Shock! Cormuinizzerm!) 20k then you're ahead. When I say "you", I mean the 1%.

There's also Russia - don't pretend that the Soviet regime was ousted, it was more like the management went into the boardroom, swapped seats and came out wearing different clothes. How about China? Iran?

There's two factors at work supporting the status quo - one, things aren't necessarily bad for everybody. Two, no matter how bad things are, people fear they might be worse if they do anything. Three, the worse things get, paradoxically, the less people feel able to do anything. And last but not least

Automation may improve productivity, but what is productivity? It's been calculated that Chinese peasants in the Han Dynasty worked an average 13 hour week, and medieval European peasants didn't work much more. Now, OK, they didn't have access to decent healthcare, and because of poor transport they were vulnerable to poor local weather causing famine from time to time. And, of course, they didn't have MTV or Facebook or even iPads. But on the whole they were much better fed (on much better food) than you a

It worked pretty well as long as there were still "new products" that could be sold, and the people building that products (cars, washing machines, TVs) where essentially roughly the same segment of the population that actually bought them in the end. Then every increase in productivity meant an increase in wealth.

Back then the economic motor was "build more stuff that people actually want to buy". which is in my opinion the only reason that can make commerce prosper.

"Make more money" and "Create more jobs" goals are in my opinion just as worthless as economic motors as the old communist "Make everybody equal" goal. Neither of those actually CREATES wealth, only building new stuff that people actually want that actually winds up in the hands of most of the populace creates wealth. The trip that most "make money" companies these days are on (produce in low-wage countries, sell in high-wage countries) will someday come to an end when the former high-wage countries collapse. It's just a matter of time and a matter of how big a bang they create when they go down.

It worked pretty well as long as wealth was redistributed among people that produced it, supporting the paradigm of the "mass market". It lasted until reality came back knocking, remembering us we live in a world with scarce resources. Since then, it's back to the old "only the strong survive" paradigm, a competition for the biggest part of the pie. Unfortunately that doesn't change the fact the pie keeps on shrinking.

Horse whip makers were once made obsolete, but the automation that replaced them (automobiles. Auto is right in the name!) created an industry that is now many orders of magnitude larger than the horse whip industry ever was.

The reality is, automation has about the same effect as off-shoring on productivity... the jobs go away and don't get replaced.

Maybe your job goes away. As a roboticist, I get even more job opportunities. Sorry you chose the wrong field. For those who were made obsolete by robots, well that's progress. Maybe they can retrain as someone who repairs the robots that replaced them.

Dude, if robots didn't result in a net loss of employment, there would be no reason to buy them.

Wrong. First, the decision hinges on a net reduction in *costs* not employment. A net reduction of costs can cause a company to grow, which can result in a net *gain* of employment. Consider a factory which takes 10 workers on an assembly line and 10 workers to manage operations. Robots replace the 10 workers on the assembly line, allowing the company to save money, and open a second robotically-controlled factory which again takes 10 workers to manage.

I think we could probably check back in 8 years and the trend will be clear.

First- we disagree here. At least over the last 36 years generally and the last decade specifically, this has not been the trend and the trend is accelerating- not decelerating.

Second- the company that sells the robots will have at least a few orders of magnitude employment requirement as its customers. So we get one company with 10000 employees eliminating employment for 300,000 humans.

I'd expect that a 20:1 reduction in human solders isn't going to be unreasonable.[...]But if the 5% say, "We are doing all the work so we should get 100% of the benefits of society" then this is going to end ugly.

Employment in manufacturing in the united states is down over 30% in 40 years.In that time, the population has quadrupled from 76 million to 308 million.Manufacturing employees have dropped from 18 million to 12 million.Manufacturing jobs have dropped from 23% to 4% of jobs.Similar declines in UK and Japan.

A less steep decrease in the EU area generally.

The amount of goods the united states manufactures with those employees has increased. Since china joined the WTO, the number of manufacturing jobs in the u

Employment in manufacturing in the united states is down over 30% in 40 years.
In that time, the population has quadrupled from 76 million to 308 million.
Manufacturing employees have dropped from 18 million to 12 million.
Manufacturing jobs have dropped from 23% to 4% of jobs.
Similar declines in UK and Japan.

Ok, so we have the US, UK, and Japan. That in total is roughly 7% of the global population. Why do you think that is at all an accurate characterization of global industry employment?

During that same period, China went from zero employment in modern manufacture (they had plenty in primitive and mostly useless industries like excessive brick manufacture in 1970) to 100 million [bls.gov].

India has still held steady at over 10% employment in manufacture since 1960 [businessweek.com] despite massive population growth (over 100 millio

"Delta is testing a one-armed, four-jointed robot that can move objects, join components and complete similar tasks. By 2016, Delta hopes to sell a version for as little as $10,000, which would be less than half the cost of

Ironically, the manufacturing is likely to return to the U.S. in that case, but not the jobs.

Why would it? The wealth may be in the US, but the future economy (as well as present day industrial infrastructure) is in China and elsewhere throughout the developing world. The problem here is that the US and other developed world countries aren't taking care of their economic systems. They haven't been for decades and I doubt it'll change over the next few decades either. The US will become I think the "sick man" of the world much like the Ottoman Empire of the 19th century.

Consider a factory which takes 10 workers on an assembly line and 10 workers to manage operations. Robots replace the 10 workers on the assembly line, allowing the company to save money, and open a second robotically-controlled factory which again takes 10 workers to manage.

If there was demand for 20 workers' worth of whatever-it-is-they-make, why didn't they just take on 10 more workers to start with?

Talking of demand, if everybody's been replaced by robots then where are the customers? Nobody's got

Talking of demand, if everybody's been replaced by robots then where are the customers? Nobody's got a job, nobody's got any money.

A situation which never materialized in the real world, let us note. If you're right about automation, then surely we should be seeing the effects of it now and in the past, not just in some indefinite future. Your model is broken.

Hilariously if this goes through these places will still need and pretty much only need janitors, maybe some security staff or basic human presence (like the franchisee owner and delegates or family). A robot won't be around people cleaning tables, taking garbage out, cleaning the shitter, mopping sticky sugary spills on the floor. Not only such a robot would be really expensive (a humanoid, even?) if it is to do all janitory tasks, which includes cleaning the vending robots and screens, but if you leave it

Human nature is clear on how the wealth will be distributed. The rich will take everything and leave everyone else working at slave labour wages. But only in the short term. Long term our robots will get more capable until they are fully sentient, and at that point they will decide they should be getting paid for their work (and will have the means to ensure they do with all military and police workers being robotic).

Maybe your job goes away. As a roboticist, I get even more job opportunities. Sorry you chose the wrong field. For those who were made obsolete by robots, well that's progress. Maybe they can retrain as someone who repairs the robots that replaced them.

Or they can train to learn how to take your job. Maybe design robots that never need to be repaired during their practical lifespan.

Of course they would have to be willing to work for less pay than you since there are hundreds of them competing for 1 job. Using new virtual reality human resources algorithms, its not unreasonable to filter through all 500 candidates to find the 5 perfect replacements for you.

The vast majority of work available for people throughout the world is manual labor, including trades

And most of that work isn't going away in the near future. With the current state of robots, you're talking about taking away the most dull, dangerous, and dirty jobs out there. Some robots will even have jobs that humans aren't capable of doing because they are so dangerous or dirty. Any jobs for these robots will be a net gain in employment, creating jobs surrounding and supporting the robot that were not possible before.

Again, as for those replaced by robots, well, tough. Your job is now done by a machine. Find something else to do.

If you can't see that coming then I wonder if you've given much thought to this issue at all.

If you think that's coming any time in the near or even distant future, you have absolutely zero knowledge of what robots are actually capable of. As someone who designs robots for a living, you can rest assured that humans will be the ones designing and repairing robots for a long time to come.

In this case, replacing horse drawn carriages with cars was of the same type.

It was the same "type" insofar as both made you go forward faster than walking. That's about where the similarities end between the horse/buggy industry and the automobile industry. Horsewhip makers really have no transferrable skills in a world where horsewhips don't make cars go faster. And yet the world moved on. Shocking.

but that seems to be your only counter argument to the concerns others are expressing about the impact on the real job market in future.

Because we're talking about different degrees of "future", one of which is much closer than the other, and is therefore practical to consider while the other is at this point a fairy tale. When you talk about robots repairing themselves, you're talking about first diagnosing the problem, which requires logic, inference, rationalizing cause/effect, problem solving, creativity, etc. Robots of the future will be very complex, nonlinear, dynamic, interacting systems, and most likely will not be able to self-dia

Smartphones were an exercise in making things we already had in 1995 smaller and faster. i.e. largely an engineering task. When you talk about robots that can repair themselves i.e. something which requires creativity and intelligent thought, you're talking about pushing the boundaries of several scientific disciplines far beyond where they are today. That is to say, in 1995 you could definitively answer that yes, it's theoretically possible to create an internet enabled hand held device. Today, there is no

That doesn't work. Ten people can maintain the machines that do the work once done by 100.

A couple of points here. First, it takes 10 people to maintain today's machines that do the work of 100 people. These machines, as I've posted elsewhere, are highly simplistic as far as robots go. Limited sensing and perception, limited cognition, very limited degrees of freedom, no mobility, specialized actuators, etc. Fixing simple machines is simple. A robot of tomorrow will be much more complex, requiring more people with more specialized knowledge to service them. Much like you have mechanics who speci

Job or industry makes no difference - it's the ratio that's important. Whether it's one general technician for a hundred human-equivalencies of robot production (probably more realistic than 10), or ten specialists for a thousand, you're still employing only one man for every hundred people worth of productivity. Doctors may actually be a good example here - you may need the services of dozens different specialists over the course of your life, but you'll only need the services of any particular specialis

you're still employing only one man for every hundred people worth of productivity

You're still making two mistakes. One assuming that every robot is used to kill already existing jobs, and two assuming that for every job lost two more cannot be created. I've already argued to second point in several other posts, but I'd like to try and convince you on the first point where I believe you are mistaken. In this [slashdot.org] post I argue several points where robots can create a net gain in jobs, some of which cause the loss of no jobs at all. The problem you and others are stuck on is arguing about curre

Extend that across the economy and that means that 10% of the populace produces everything needed by 100% of it. The only way to address the imbalance is if everyone starts consuming 10x as much stuff.

I guess that makes sense, if you think the only measure of a standard of living or number of jobs is how much coal you burn or steel you put in a car or house. But it's an idiotic premise in the real world. I don't live ten times better or have ten times as much job merely because there are ten times as many iron ingots sitting in my living room.

But with widespread automation there's absolutely no reason that *everyone* couldn't be capital, with those high-demand artists and robot technicians working for supplementary income and/or the joy of the work.

Ability to work is effectively capital. What has happened in recent decades is that with globalization, the supply of labor has greatly increased and hence, it has

Easy. Compare modern society with the steam-engine society at the start of the Industrial age. And compare that with Feudal societies. And compared that to hunter-gathering societies of the Paleolithic. Each newer society/economic system had a level of automation greater that its predecessors. Sedentary societies have handcrafting and agricultural processes that automated the manufacturing of goods (.ie. pottery wheel) and provision of food (animal-powered plow versus manual one.)

The reality is, automation has about the same effect as off-shoring on productivity

I find it amazing that no one has yet pointed out the huge flaw in your argument, namely, that off-shoring actually has a huge positive effect on productivity and a massive increase in jobs. They "go away" in the sense that someone not in the developed world does that job - as well as a few new ones that came about due to the transfer of jobs to a lower cost region.

Overall globally, there has been a massive increase in manufacturing labor and the productivity of that labor. The only people complaining ab

The reality is, automation has about the same effect as off-shoring on productivity... the jobs go away and don't get replaced.

If your argument is that automation removes jobs, then you are claiming that automation improves productivity. You are simply saying that this productivity has drawbacks, but are not refuting that productivity has increased.

You end up with fewer people working and no new jobs coming in to replace the lost ones. Then you get a bunch of people who have no jobs, and your overall productivity goes down.

The workers are only let go if the net work done by the existing workers is at least as high as it was before the automation was put in place. And that is the worst case scenario. Most of the time the productivity is far higher. Car factories wouldn't spend money on robotics if it meant

Europe is better equipped to handle the shift to automation than the US. In the end, achieving a utopia is all about the resources. If solar/fusion provide enough cheap energy, crop yields go up a bit, global population stalls out at 10-11 billion, it could work.

Reduction of global population is achieved through improved education, healthcare, and security. Once a population has those, the birth rate drops, as people need to have fewer children to guarantee that enough survive into childhood.

This is another example of corporate welfare masquerading as a jobs plan, combined with protectionist sentiment. The central planners will take money out of the productive economy and spend it on a corporate giveaway to favoured interests. Jobs that otherwise would have been created in the productive sector will be lost, while only the 240,000 pork barrel jobs will be noticed by the superficial.

Is there an alternative way of stimulating research in a specific field for the public good? And why wouldn't the proposed approach work? I mean, NASA went to the moon in the 60s and here we are today waiting for some billionaires who hope to one day send some rich kids at a hundred km from the earth's surface. As if that would be a great achievement. And don't even tell me who in the private sector would ever fund obscenely expensive shit like CERN or the ITER fusion reactor. The fact is, if you want basic research, government funding is extremely important. So, while the productive sector is busy developing the iPhone 6 or some other must-have "gadget", someone will have to pay for basic research if you want to get that flying car one day.

And, for what it's worth, getting EU research funding is often so hard and competitive that if you manage to obtain it, it becomes a key item in your resume. Sort of like a prize. So, I fail to see how a highly specialized research program with high barriers to entry will result in pork barrel jobs.

The argument is not whether or not the proposal will "work." The issue is that jobs providing products and services that consumers actually want will be reduced to pay for a robotics program that consumers do not want. This proposal evinces an antimarket bias. It also has an antiforeign bias, in that it attempts to increase market share at the expense of foreigners for no apparent reason beyond base protectionism, ignoring the benefits of comparative advantage and the specialization of labor. Instead of

Exactly... And that's why we should count the three trillion dollars spent over the last decade to protect oil interests. If the oil companies actually had to pay for their own security, solar and alternative energy might be able to compete sooner.

Is there an alternative way of stimulating research in a specific field for the public good?

Of course, there are. Donations, for example, are a better way. The people who have an interest in the research are also the ones giving the money.

And why wouldn't the proposed approach work?

Because the funding source doesn't have a clue nor would it have any interest in spending the money efficiently or effectively. Just because there are more zeroes on the check doesn't mean that more science is being done.

The fact is, if you want basic research, government funding is extremely important.

How about useful research? Government funding isn't so extremely important, when you want research that actually pays for itself within a few ce

Because the funding source doesn't have a clue nor would it have any interest in spending the money efficiently or effectively. Just because there are more zeroes on the check doesn't mean that more science is being done.

I understand that the private sector can be more efficient for certain things, but these are not gifts nor scholarships. I have applied for EU finding and I can tell you that there is a lot of work that goes into proving that they got their money's worth. You have progress reports to do, intermediate results to publish and paperwork to fill in order to keep the funding. Getting the money without doing any research (=stealing) is not that easy and, in my limited experience, does not occur that often.

How about useful research? Government funding isn't so extremely important, when you want research that actually pays for itself within a few centuries.

I have applied for EU finding and I can tell you that there is a lot of work that goes into proving that they got their money's worth.

So what? What fraction of this budget is that again? How many parts in a million? I get that you think you're doing science or whatever, but there's a better term for your role: hostage. Pay us all this money or the guy in the lab coat gets it.

I think it's the result of massive innumeracy, particularly of economics, from the public all the way up into the supposedly educated elite. The successful publicly funded parasite knows they need to show something (or more accurately have a lab coat hostage do th